This invention relates to load beam slider arms for carrying heads in a disk drive, such as a disk reader or servowriter.
As is known, in a disk drive a head, such as a magnetic head, for reading data from or writing mapping information onto the disk is typically mounted at one end of a load beam slider arm. The other end of the load beam slider arm is secured to an actuator arm, which is in turn coupled to the drive shaft of a motor, such as a servo or stepping motor. The head is moved to a selected track on the disk by the motor via the actuator and load beam slider arms.
A conventional load beam slider arm comprises a thin, resilient metal blade. The head is attached by a gimbal mechanism to a slider, which is in turn secured, for example by epoxy, to a planar surface of the blade's distal end. The blade resiliently urges the head against the surface of the disk when the disk is at rest. As the disk rotates, a stream of air passing between the slider and disk lifts the head sufficiently to space the head from the disk surface. To stiffen the blade and provide added resiliency, the sides of the blade typically are each angularly disposed with respect to the planar surfaces of the blade in the opposite direction from the planar surface on which the head is disposed. For example, the sides are bent towards the lower surface (i.e., downward) of a blade having the head disposed on the upper surface thereof. Thus, the height (i.e., profile) of the load beam slider arm extends from the edges of the downward-folded sides to the upper surface of the head, typically about 0.0745 inches. Also, because the sides are bent away from the head, the region of the load beam slider arm which carries the head is typically fairly narrow, often narrower (for example, 0.075 inches) than the width of the head itself.
In multiple disk drives, a pair of such slider arms are disposed back-to-back between a pair of disks, one head communicating with the lower surface of the upper disk, and the other head with the upper surface of the lower disk The disks must be spaced sufficiently (for example, by 0.2 inches) to make room for both load beam slider arms.